Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. premiere

Shorter review -- should have gone for the two hour premiere.

Longer review -- 'Cause way too much info in the first episode. I'm wondering if this is Joss Whedon post Dollhouse and Firefly, where he's afraid to take his time fleshing out characters and backstories because the show might not last. If so, more's the pity, because I think this show is just too busy from the start.

Agent Coulson isn't dead from the Avengers movie. Or perhaps he is. Maybe this Coulson is a clone or a robot frame housing Coulson's awareness, or god only knows what. All we know is that he really wasn't in Tahiti recovering from his supposedly mortal wounds at the hands of Loki. And he doesn't know it, so shhhhhh.

We've got the inevitable update on the trendy geek person, this time it's two people -- a guy and a girl with a combined name of FitzSimmons, who do all the wild techno/geek stuff. Ass-kicking gal (asian, of course) hiding out from field ops for some reason. Ultra-tough guy with a soft spot . . . maybe. New recruit from the trendy hacker/activist (think Anonymous, or rather, how they see themselves, minus the reality of thuggish lawlessness and Guy Fawlkes masks) community. And the yummy Agent Hill is back, played by Cobie Smulders, who looks like she's put on a few pounds since The Avengers.

And a black ops plane, ridiculously obtrusive black vehicles with the S.H.I.E.L.D. name and logo on the side (real stealthy there guys), and a flying early sixties Corvette. Oh yeah, and a possibly continuous villain group, this time mixing gamma radiation, alien dna, super soldier serum, and other goodies to create their own superheroes but instead making crazy people who explode when they get mad.

*whew*

Don't get me wrong, I liked the show. It was just way too frenetic for me in the first episode. Plenty of cool dialog -- I liked Coulson's line about people confusing "new" with "improved." They dumped a tag line during the previews for next week's show saying you can't afford to miss the last few minutes of any show. That's clever.

Update:
Ahh, I see now...the tag was not to miss the last minute of "next week's" show, because it turned out there was a cameo from Samuel L. Jackson. Very cool. I wonder if that means there will be other cameos from the movie cast?

I hope the show works, just to give me something to geek out about in between big budget movies. And I like/respect Whedon's work, so I'd like to see him succeed on the small screen.

Plus, he's always given us some really hot gals in his shows, which is nice:

Yes. They reference the attack on New York a couple of times. There's also a scene where they talk about Coulson dying. In the show he talks about rehabbing in Tahiti, but that is apparently a false memory and no one is supposed to tell him that, so...mystery.It's definitely post Avengers movie.